Microsoft offers password-free authentication for online applications

Applications that use Azure Active Directory (AD) to authenticate (a category that includes Office 365) may soon stop using passwords entirely.

Azure AD accounts can already use the Microsoft Authenticator application for two-factor authentication, by combining a password with a one-time code. With the new support without password, the authentication is fully managed by the application. the application itself represents "something you have", combined with biometric authentication or a PIN. Passwords have a long problematic history; Although they can be very strong, they are sufficiently long and random enough, human passwords are often short, non-random and reused on multiple sites. Application-based authentication avoids this long-standing weakness.

The activation of two-factor authentication is one of the tasks that companies can perform to improve their security. To this end, Microsoft has extended "Microsoft Security Score," a tool used to evaluate the rules of the organization and provide advice on steps to take to strengthen an organization against attacks. Secure Score already covers the security features of Office 365 and Windows; To do this, Microsoft has added Azure AD, Azure Security Center and Enterprise Mobility Suite, covering a wider range of settings and options.

If breached, the new Microsoft Threat Protection can detect and correct a wide range of threat protection systems, from email to identity to infrastructure. This should make it easier to detect suspicious behavior (strange connection attempts, unusual file changes, unexpected program failures, atypical network activity) and lock accounts, isolate systems from the network, or anything else appropriate to the threat.

Finally, Azure Confidential Computing is now available in preview. Confidential Computing is a platform for Azure VMs that use processors that support Intel's SGX technology. With the Confidential Computing Platform, developers can create cloud applications that process sensitive data in secure, isolated and encrypted enclaves, so even Microsoft can not see what's going on. The intention is to allow applications with strict privacy concerns to be safely executed in the cloud.